1. Field Of The Invention
This invention as demonstrated herein relates to machinery for the woodworking and furniture manufacturing industries, and in particular to machinery used in producing laminated structures or materials.
2. Of The Prior Art Description And Objectives Of The Invention
It has become increasing popular in recent years to construct office and household furnishings with various veneers and laminate materials in order to save money over solid wood or metal products and to provide durable, attractive stylized designs. Desk tops, table tops and shelving materials are but a few of the many components manufactured today which employ inexpensive substrates which may be formed from pressed chipboard or other low priced compositions which are overlaid with a thin lamina of a synthetic material such as a polymeric veneer or natural product such as a wood veneer. Thus, synthetic laminas are often bonded by hot melt adhesives or quick setting glues and the so-formed-laminates are thereafter carefully trimmed to have a look of natural wood. In forming these laminates, the manufacturer has to be extremely careful to trim the edges so as to preserve the integrity of the appearance. Various machinery is now on the market for trimming square or flat edges of laminates having square corners, however for edges that are curved or have complex profiles, these generally require the outer surface lamina which is attached to be carefully trimmed by hand. When manually trimming table tops or other flat structures which have corners with complex edge profiles much time and effort has to be expended by skilled personnel. Since it is desirable to utilize as little manual labor as possible due to the expense and time required, complex profile lamina clipping apparatus would therefore be in great demand for use with automatic edging (laminating) machinery.
With the disadvantages and difficulties associated with lamina edge clipping, it is therefore one objective of the present invention to provide a mechanical device for clipping the excess lamina at the corner of a substrate having a complex edge profile.
It is yet another objective of the present invention to provide a method of clipping excess edge lamina from a substrate which is reliable, fast and accurate.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a device for clipping or trimming a lamina positioned on the edge of a substrate, regardless of the profile of the edge.
It is also an objective of the invention to provide a lamina clipping device which includes a first stationary laminate complementary blade and a second movable laminate complementary blade which engage to enclose a corner of the laminate while clipping excess edge lamina therefrom.
Various other objectives and advantages of present invention become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed description of the invention is presented below.